


the soul knows the rest

by WingedQuill



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Daemon Separation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22774369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: The last trial is the worst one.The last trial is when they separate a witcher from his daemon.Geralt has tried to live since then, has tried to make his life into something okay, if not good. Has buried the loss of his daemon as best he can. But he thinks he'll always be known as the Butcher, as a soulless monster.Then he meets Jaskier.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 61
Kudos: 754





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> CW: Very brief moment of suicidal ideation
> 
> Edit: I just realized that AO3 removed all my italics when I copy/pasted the fic whoops

The last trial is the worst one.

He had known it was coming for weeks, tried to strengthen himself against it. Clenched his jaw and straightened his shoulders and told himself that he would not cry, he would not scream. He can’t choose against this, and begging will not stop it. So he will endure. He will endure. He will—

They lie together that last night, him and his daemon, pressed together on the hard cot that Geralt had called a bed for the last four years. Their last moment as a complete person.

“Can’t we do something?” his daemon asks. He’s a cat that day, warm and small and comforting. Geralt just closes his eyes—his eyes that weren’t his eyes, because they had already torn away that part of his humanity. He forces the tears to the back of his throat.

“No,” he replies, thick and cracking and _weak._ “We can’t.”

And that is that.

***

It hurts.

It hurts more than anything Geralt had ever felt in his life—worse than any of the potions, worse than his bones breaking and re-arranging themselves underneath his skin, worse than his eyes burning out of his skull. He’s being torn in half, he’s being boiled alive, he’s trapped in a bolt of lightning and there’s no escaping this.

He rages against the stone walls of his prison, clawing his fingertips to shreds as he scrabbles to hold on to his connection with his daemon. And it’s getting weaker, and further away, and the distance is ripping up roots that had grown into every crack of his being, ripping out his nerves and his muscles and every fear he’d ever felt, every dream he’d ever chased. Splintering his mind into a million pieces and this, _this_ was why they said witchers weren’t human.

The bond stretches and stretches and for the last, precious second that he’s connected to his daemon, all he feels is pain.

And then it snaps in half and he feels nothing at all.

***

When he comes out of that cell, shaking and sobbing and only half himself, they tell him that he is a witcher now, and they put a sword in his hand.

He considers slashing his throat with it. _Silver for monsters, right?_

But he doesn’t. He can’t. His daemon would be furious, would claw bloody lines down his face as soon as they met again in the next world, and they deserve a kind reunion, if nothing else. He chokes back his sobs and sheaths the sword. Vesemir smiles at him, grim and proud, and Geralt realizes that he’s just passed another test.

*** 

“What did you do to him?” he asks Vesemir the day he leaves Kaer Morhen, swords strapped to his sides and a handful of potions crammed into Roach’s saddlebag. Ready to meet the world.

“Who?”

His daemon’s name burns on his tongue but he can’t say it. It’s been three years but the loss still festers in the back of his mind like an open wound, ready to consume him with fever if he dwells on it for too long. But he has to know.

He has to know if—if his soul is—

“My daemon,” he says instead. Vesemir goes rigid. “I need to know.”

“No you don’t.” Vesemir’s voice is harsh, shards of ice against Geralt’s ears.

“I—”

“ _You_ are a witcher. Witchers don’t need daemons.”

He shakes his head, like a disappointed parent. Geralt balls his fingers into fists. _You ripped out my soul,_ he wants to scream. _You ripped out my soul and I didn’t have a choice and now you won’t even tell me what happened to him._ He doesn’t feel like a witcher in that moment. He doesn’t feel like a human either. He feels like something in the middle, some monster that knows it’s broken but has no way of fixing itself.

“Walk the path,” Vesemir says. “This is what you were meant for Geralt.”

He doesn’t clap Geralt on the shoulder, or hug him, or do anything that a parent might do, sending their child off into the wide and uncaring world.

“It is what I was made for,” Geralt grumbles. An agreement on the surface, an accusation beneath. He spins on his heel and stalks out of the place that forged him, stalks away from the man that had held his heart in his hands and chosen to tear it away and—

He doesn’t look back.

***

The world is not a kind place to people that are different, and there is nothing more different than not having a soul. People and daemons alike shrink from him as he walks by, skittish and scared, like he’s likely to grab his swords and start swinging. He thinks, at first, that his status as a monster hunter might earn him at least some grudging respect. But after the fifth time he’s turned away from a half-empty inn, after the sixth time he’s served moldy bread or rotten meat, after the third time that a barkeep tries to poison him—he realizes that their hatred for the soulless far outweighs their gratitude.

So he adapts. He adapts to sleeping in stables and forests, adapts to catching his own food and watching every drink like a hawk. He adapts to being hated.

He never quite adapts to the phantom pain that settles over his heart and skitters over his skin. Never gets used to being totally alone. He starts talking to Roach, just to hear the sound of his own voice. Once, in a dream, she speaks back in his daemon’s voice. He wakes and stares up at the stars, so bright and boundless above him, and thinks of how he and his daemon had laid in the grass for hours and made stories out of them. His other half had always been so creative, grasping onto every sliver of an idea and weaving together wild tapestries of words. A reflection of the child that Geralt had been, chatty and inquisitive and relentlessly curious— _What’s at the end of the world? And beyond that? And beyond that?_

He tries to find that person inside his brain, make up new stories about the stars. But they keep coming back to monsters and death and after an hour he turns onto his side so he doesn’t have to look at the sky anymore.

***

It gets easier, eventually. As the years fade into decades, the pain begins to drain from him. Instead of feeling it constantly, it comes in sharp spikes. A red-feathered bird, a beam of sunlight sparking off a still pond, a field of golden flowers. Sometimes, it sets in all on its own, nothing causing it that Geralt can see. But soon enough the heaviness lifts off of him and he can keep going, keep breathing, keep living.

He cuts down monsters and no one is grateful but they are alive, and that’s what matters. He’s doing some good in the world, at least.

***

Then Blaviken happens.

***

Renfri had been born without a daemon, cursed to carry her soul inside her chest. She’s a twisted mirror of Geralt, and he doesn’t want to kill her because he understands, he understands what it is to be hated for something that he could not control. But she’s threatening an entire town of—well, not innocents, but people who don’t deserve to die. And he doesn’t want to pick between two evils, because he was made by people who thought they were picking the lesser and he’s not so sure that they were.

But he doesn’t know what to do and she’s fighting him and so—

And so—

They call him the Butcher and he thinks he might deserve that.

***

Jaskier does not.

In his seventy years of life, Jaskier is the strangest man he’s ever met. He walks straight up to Geralt without a jot of fear and asks him to review his frankly terrible song. He grabs ahold of Geralt’s life and refuses to let go, worming his way into every bit of his story like a persistent weed.

He’s more difficult to read than most humans because he doesn’t have a daemon out in the open, pacing by his side or perching on his shoulder. His soul is a ladybird, and he carriers her in a big golden locket that he wears around his neck. He makes up for the lack of daemon body language by being remarkably (sometimes painfully) candid about his own feelings.

“Geralt I’m hungry.”

“Well the Countess de Stael has gone and broken my heart again.”

“Of all the—how _dare_ you, take that back!”

“You _matter_ , Geralt. I know you think you don’t, but you do.”

Jaskier calls him a friend after they’ve known each other for two weeks and Geralt shakes that off because he’ll change his mind eventually, when he can’t get any more good ballads out of him, or when the true existential dread of traveling with a soulless man finally sets in. But Jaskier is persistent.

“Your very best friend in the whole wide world—”

“Cut me some slack Geralt, I’m your only friend—”

“Our friendship will make for an epic the likes of which has not graced heaven nor Earth!”

Granted, Jaskier had been incredibly drunk for that last one, but it still makes something come loose in Geralt’s chest, warm and heavy. The knowledge that he might finally, _finally_ have somewhere safe to land, for the first time since he was a child.

***

Of course, then it all goes to hell.

Their camp is attacked in the middle of the night by bandits, of all things. Bandits who hadn’t realized that one of the camp’s occupants is a witcher, if their cursing is anything to go by. Geralt fights three at once but there are two more, and they go after Jaskier.

Geralt roars in rage as they pin Jaskier to the ground, trying to slash his way to his side. But one of the bandits is actually a decent swordsman, and keeps him engaged while his friends search Jaskier for valuables.

They find the locket.

They find the locket and they tear it from Jaskier’s neck and he makes a sharp panicked sound and no, no, no this won’t happen to someone else right in front of Geralt’s eyes. He makes a desperate push forward, blasting the swordsman with Aard and slipping past his defenses. He cuts him down but that just spooks the bandit with the locket. And he’s turning, running, carrying Jaskier’s daemon out of the camp.

_“No!”_ Geralt screams. He chases after him, pelting through the undergrowth, but they’re ten, twenty, thirty feet away and he knows. He knows it’s already too late, that Jaskier and his daemon are further apart than anyone should be from their soul.

“Stop!” he yells. “Stop, that locket has a daemon in it!”

The bandit makes a horrified sound—disgusted at himself, as he well should be—and throws the locket over his shoulder. It hits the leaves with a thud and Geralt stumbles to a halt. And he wants to chase down the bandit and put a sword through his throat, but he needs to get back to Jaskier.

He picks up the locket carefully, reverently. He’s not quite touching Jaskier’s soul, but he is carrying it and that’s important, that _means_ something. He runs back to the camp as fast as he legs can carry him, dreading what he will see when he bursts from the trees. Jaskier, unresponsive on the ground. Jaskier, screaming in agony. Jaskier, like so many of Geralt’s fellow witchers, unable to take the pain of separation, dead and cold and gone forever.

Instead what he sees is Jaskier, trembling but fine, the blood of the last bandit cooling on his arms, a silver dagger clutched in his right hand.

“Jaskier,” Geralt pants. He rushes to his side, holding out the locket. “Jaskier, how—”

Jaskier looks at him and there are tears in his eyes. Resignation settles over his shoulders as he takes the locket, turning it over in his fingers.

“I had to tell you eventually, I guess,” he says, and he clicks open the locket.

It’s empty.

***

Jaskier looks terrified of him for the first time ever, but it’s a fear that Geralt knows. It’s a fear that still shudders through him every time he walks into a tavern. _What will people do to someone that they think is a monster?_

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Geralt says, because get that out of the way first. Jaskier nods, and laughs, shuddering and weak and so unlike himself.

“I know,” he says. “I know. I know _you.”_

“You aren’t anything less because you don’t have a daemon,” says Geralt. And it’s everything that he wanted the world to tell him. It’s the words he was denied, time and time again, and he has the chance to make it right for someone else, someone he _cares about,_ shit, and—and he doesn’t want to fuck this up. So he closes his eyes and he thinks about his own daemon, long since dead and gone and dissolved back into Dust. Thinks of his comforting words, of the way he could string a sentence together like a necklace. Careful and exquisite and so unlike Geralt.

“Whoever tore her from you,” he says. “They took away the worst thing they could have taken. They broke you in a way that no one should be broken. But you’re still here. And that—that takes strength.”

Jaskier is shaking, and he’s looking at Geralt like he’s sprouted a second head, but he doesn’t seem so scared anymore. So Geralt feels comfortable taking another step forward, holding out a hand like he’s settling a skittish colt.

“That takes strength that most people will never need to find,” he says. “But you found it.”

A sob punches itself out of Jaskier’s lips and Geralt suddenly has an armful of crying bard. He doesn’t say anything. He feels drained of all his words, exhausted from trying to remember the person that he was. But he brings his arms slowly around Jaskier’s shoulders, trying to convey _I’m here_ and _I won’t leave you_ and _we’ll figure this out_ through touch alone.

Based on the way Jaskier exhales, long and steady like he’s expelling toxic air, he thinks he gets the message.

***

“I don’t remember my daemon,” Jaskier murmurs that night. They’re lying side by side under the stars, and Geralt doesn’t want to breathe too loudly, lest he wreck the calm that has settled over Jaskier and let him speak.

“I remember her being torn from me,” he continues. “I remember the pain. I remember the fear. But I don’t—I don’t remember her voice, or her name, or if she was settled or not. I don’t remember anything about my life before I was separated. It’s like my mind blocked it out.”

He gestures vaguely at his head before letting his arm flop down over his stomach.

“My parents found me wandering alone in the woods, completely dazed. And they were terrified of me, that I didn’t have a daemon but they said that it must be destiny. So they took me in and they grew to love me in time. In their own way. The locket was their idea.”

Jaskier takes a deep breath, like he’s weighing his next words very carefully.

“They’re dead now,” he murmurs. “They’ve been dead for decades. I’m not—I’m not actually thirty.”

Separation slows aging. Of course. Geralt wants to scream at the world. It was expected for witchers and mages to be daemonless and ageless, but to do that to a normal human, to expose someone that different to a world that didn’t expect them was—

He remembers the fear in Jaskier’s eyes. Something like that had to be learned, through beatings and stabbings and being thrown into the cold. Through countless interactions with people who were scared of you and what you were, and who dealt with that fear by killing the source.

“How old are you?” he asks, trying to keep the anger out of his voice.

“Eighty? I think. Something around there. My childhood is—fuzzy. After the separation I wasn’t really all there for a while.”

Witchers had potions and mutagens and relentless training to help them cope with the shock of separation. Mages had their daemons, separated yes, but still present. Jaskier had had nothing.

Geralt closes his eyes. There’s a ember burning in his throat.

“Do you remember your daemon?” Jaskier asks.

Bright and curious and quick as a light beam. A constant comfort to Geralt throughout every trial but the last. Always shifting, cat and wolf and butterfly, trying out new forms. But he had always liked being a bird the best, liked the wind beneath his wings, liked the music he could make.

“Yes.” The word sounds like it’s been ripped from his lungs.

“I’m sorry.”

There’s a hesitant hand on his elbow.

“I’m so, so _sorry,_ Geralt.”

He opens his eyes and stares at the stars until they burn.

“Me too,” he murmurs.

***

He can’t sleep that night.

***

Or the night after that

***

Or the night after that. Jaskier shakes off his melancholy enough to drag him to a royal betrothal, and there’s a hedgehog and a wedding and maybe claiming the Law of Surprise wasn’t the best idea but in Geralt’s defense he was exhausted.

Jaskier and him part ways after that, Jaskier off to sing at a string of weddings and funerals. Geralt thinks, at first, that his absence will calm his mind enough to sleep. But if anything, it just makes it worse. Jaskier had ripped open a half-healed wound and Geralt can’t be still without thinking of his daemon, of Jaskier’s daemon, of the people that had decided to take their souls from them. And he’s sad, and he’s angry, and he’s so fucking _tired._

That’s when he decides enough. Enough

***

Going after a djinn was also not the best idea Geralt’s ever had. He’s been having an off month.

He looks up at the swirling maelstrom above them and he considers, briefly, tying his destiny with Yennefer’s. Because she’s lost, and alone, and wouldn’t that be kind, to give her someone? To give her himself?

But he’s selfish.

He’s selfish and he’s angry at the world, at what it’s done to him, at what it’s done to Jaskier. And this is his chance to right those wrongs, to take back their souls. Maybe his only chance.

“I want Jaskier and me to get our daemons back.”

The djinn darts away as soon as he’s said the words and the room shakes and cracks around them as Yennefer chants in Elder, desperate to call it back to her. And he’s halfway to the door when he hears a scream, high and pained and terrified.

He runs outside like the armies of hell are at his back, and he sees the djinn swirling above Jaskier’s thrashing body. He’s clawing at his throat again, only this time it’s not a tumor bulging beneath his skin, but a long bloody gash carved into him like a sickening smile.

Geralt falls to his knees beside him and tries desperately to stem the bleeding. Presses his fingers down until they’re crimson with Jaskier’s life, and it’s right, that this blood should be on his hands. Because it’s his fault. It’s all his fault. He should have said no, he should have renounced the wishes, because djinn are cruel and literal-minded and look for every way they can to cause the wisher pain.

And how do reunite a man with his dead daemon? You kill him. Geralt would probably be next, once Jaskier has bled out.

Jaskier gasps and chokes and claws at Geralt’s clothes and Geralt holds him as tight as he can. He doesn’t try to plead for his life, doesn’t rail and rage at the djinn. All he feels is that same tight resignation that had stolen up his will the night before his daemon had been cut from him. So he rocks Jaskier back and forth, murmuring soothing nonsense as best as he can. Try and make it easier, since you can’t make it stop.

Jaskier’s eyes are teary, but grateful. And then they’re empty.

Geralt curls over the corpse, a scream building in his chest. He waits for the djinn to strike him down too, waits for the end of everything. But instead, Jaskier starts to glow.

Or not glow—not exactly. It’s not a light under his skin. But there’s something streaming off of him, golden and dust-like, pouring from the wounds and swirling into the air. Geralt stares down at him in shocked wonder, and some of the golden dust flutters onto his skin. And it’s—it’s warmth, and home, and belonging, in a way he can’t describe. It’s _Jaskier,_ but it’s not, and he’s so very confused.

The light grows and grows until Geralt thinks he might go blind from looking at it but he can’t look away. This feels important. More important than the rest of his destiny combined. The dust whirls around his hands, faster and faster until it’s a blurring ribbon of fire, weaving safety across his skin. And he doesn’t want this to ever end.

The dust settles into his skin and works its way into the scabbed over cracks that had been torn into him when he was a child. Soothing away a hurt that Geralt had thought he’d carry with him forever. And then the light is gone, curled safely inside Geralt’s veins.

Lying on top of Jaskier’s still and bloody chest is a bird. A hawk. It seems to be unconscious, but as Geralt reaches out a tentative hand to touch it, it stirs.

“Jaskier?” he asks warily.

The bird freezes.

“I remember,” it says, and there’s pain in its—there’s pain in _his_ voice, but there’s also love, and hope, and the barest hint of laughter. And Geralt knows this, because those same emotions are thrumming through his chest and—and he knows that voice. It’s been decades, almost a century, but he could never forget it.

“Dandelion,” he chokes.

His daemon throws himself into Geralt’s chest, a flurry of feathers and claws. And Geralt catches him, holds him against his heart. He’s crying, he realizes vaguely, for the first time since he was a child, he’s crying.

“They took me away,” Dandelion sobs. “They forced me into a human body I—I didn’t remember, I swear I didn’t remember.”

“You found me,” Geralt says. And there’s wonder to that, isn’t it? They had torn Dandelion out of Geralt and shoved him into a body and sent him out into the world, confused and scared and different. And he had lived, and he had _thrived,_ and he had found Geralt and become his best and only friend.

Maybe destiny isn’t such a bitch, after all.

Or maybe Dandelion is just the world’s best daemon.

“I found you,” says Dandelion. “I found you, I found you, I found you.”

Kneeling in the dirt, covered in the blood of his best friend, his soul stretching his wings in his hands, Geralt wonders if this means he’s not a witcher anymore. If he’s something else, something new. A mutant with his soul at his side for all the world to see.

“You’ll need to learn to play the lute,” Dandelion grumbles, voice still thick with tears. “I can teach you. This has the makings of a beautiful ballad.”

“We’ll see.” _Anything. Anything you want. I’d learn to play every instrument in the Continent._

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to sing. I’ve still got that part covered."

Geralt laughs, and Dandelion joins in. And they’re damaged, they’re so damaged, but they have each other. They’re not two halves desperately seeking wholeness anymore.

They’re human again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier's POV of this story just kept nagging at me, what can I say
> 
> Warnings for intrusive thoughts involving suicide (the character explicitly says that he doesn't WANT to die, and removes himself from his triggers) as well as dissociation and touch aversion. Turns out forcing a soul into a body has some bad mental health consequences, who would've thought?

The boy doesn’t remember anything before the forest.

He wakes up alone on the ground, covered in a long, tattered shirt, chest aching like he’s been struck by lightning. For a long time, he just lies in the dirt and stares up at the sky, tracing the constellations idly. And there should be someone here, there should be someone next to him, counting the stars and laughing along to his stories, but he can’t—

He can’t remember—

Tears slip from his eyes and he doesn’t know why he’s crying. But something’s been taken from him. That is one of his first conscious thoughts as a human being. Something’s been taken from him.

***

Eventually, he gets to his feet, stumbling and swaying like a newborn colt.

~~It’s easier to walk as a colt~~

He staggers forward, clutching at the trees with shaking fingers and ~~why does he have fingers, why does he have hands, why is he human~~ he looks for ~~Geralt his person they tore him away from himself and he doesn’t know where he is oh gods, oh gods~~ somewhere safe, _someone_ safe.

Two ~~humans~~ people find him eventually. A man and a woman, accompanied by a pair of foxes. They lean over him and pepper him with—words? Questions? What do they _want?_ He doesn’t understand he doesn’t—and their concern quickly blooms into terror.

 _Daemon,_ they say, again and again. _Daemon. Daemon. Where’s your daemon?_

~~I’m right here.~~

He just shakes his head, eyes wide and confused, because he doesn’t understand a word they’re saying. The woman scoops him up eventually, bouncing him in her arms while the man blusters and sputters. He wails, twisting around in her arms ~~because someone was touching him, someone who wasn’t Geralt and it was wrong, wrong, wrong, _get off of me._~~

But she soothes him and strokes his hair and eventually sleep settles over him like a soft blanket.

***

The world is fuzzy and confusing for a very long time, words hovering just out of reach. His brain feels like a thousand snapped cords twisting over themselves, and he spends most of his time either sleeping or crying. The woman slips broth between his unresponsive lips and rocks him back and forth as he cries, and the man sits at the edge of his bed and talks, voice low and rumbling. Their foxes curl up on his blanket-covered legs, warm weights that feel so much more grounding than the two people. ~~I’m one of you, _I’m one of you._~~

And they don’t give up on him. Miraculously, unbelievably, they don’t give up on him.

***

It takes years, but he claws back his mind piece by piece. Language comes back to him, settling in the tangled mess of his brain, each word a hard-fought battle. The woman—his _mother_ —bursts into tears at his first shaky attempt at speech and the man—his father—smiles at him, tight and proud.

“Your name is Julian,” he says and the boy takes that word and treasures it, tucks it safely away in his brain ~~but that’s not his name, is it? Visenna’s daemon had already named him, named him for the bright yellow flowers that grew wild and unrestrained behind their house.~~ His father takes the newly named Julian by the hands and helps him walk across the cottage on wobbly legs. Helps him whittle bits of wood to steady his trembling fingers. Keeps talking to him.

He learns how to be ~~human~~ awake. Alive. And eventually, he has a strong enough mind that his parents can tell him what’s wrong with him.

“Listen to me, Buttercup, this is important.” His mother sits at the edge of his bed and bids her fox to join her.

“This is Amite,” she says, stroking a hand down the fox’s back. “My daemon. My soul. Every person has one.”

And _oh._

Oh.

That’s what he’s missing. That’s the hole in his chest, the thing that had been taken from him.

“Where’s mine?” he asks. His father makes a strangled sound and slips a warm hand around Julian’s shoulders.

“We don’t know,” he says. “We don’t know, sweetheart. We’re not even sure if you’ve ever had one.”

He sounds almost hopeful, at the thought that his son might have just been born soulless.

“I did. It hurt,” Julian whispers. He curls up in the bed, hunching over himself. Tears brim in his eyes, and isn’t he all cried out by now? “I remember. It—I had a daemon. I think. I think someone took it.”

His mother’s fingers curl into Amite’s fur and his father’s fox leaps up onto his lap.

“Okay,” his father says, squeezing his eyes closed. A muscle jumps in his jaw. “Okay.”

“I want it back,” Julian sobs. Because he _does,_ now that he can articulate what he’s missing, what he’s lost.

His father flings his other hand around Julian’s back and pulls him into a hug. There’s a brush of fur against his wrist, warm and soft. A paw tapping against the back of his hand.

Daemon’s don’t touch humans, Julian learns later. If they do, it hurts. ~~~~

But his father doesn’t seem to notice.

~~Of course he doesn’t. Daemons can touch other daemons, after all.~~

***

All told, by the time he’s aware of what happened to him, he’s missing ten years of his life. Five years before the separation, so his parents guess, and then the five hazy years after.

That time is one more thing the world has ripped from him and he’s furious. He decides right then and there that he’s going to make the most of his life, take back every stolen year and then some. Someone had torn out his soul and cast him into the woods to die, and he’s going to shine brighter than they ever did. That’s a promise.

His determination only grows with time. On his seventeenth birthday he begs his parents to let him go to university. They’re worried, of course. He’s different, and the world abhors difference. And they fear—just as he fears, in some deep, twisted part of his heart—that he could relapse. Go back to being the shaking, wordless child that they had kept alive through sheer force of will.

But they can’t keep him in their home forever. He has to spread his wings ~~and that metaphor hurts, because he _can’t_ spread his wings like this, he’s bound to the ground forever~~ someday. One day, his father brings home a locket, golden and ornate.

“This is used to hold insect daemons,” he explains, fastening it around Julian’s neck. “If anyone asks, your daemon is a ladybird, okay? And she’s shy.”

He draws back, letting the locket fall against Julian’s chest.

“Don’t _ever_ take it off,” he says, more serious than Julian has ever heard him. "Don't ever open it."

“Okay,” Julian says, bouncing on the balls of his feet. “Does this mean—?”

His father sighs.

“Yes. I’ve enrolled you in Oxenfurt.”

He yelps incoherently with happiness and bundles both of his parents in a big hug and promises them that they won’t regret it. Promises them that this will be amazing. That _he_ will be amazing.

***

He thrives at Oxenfurt. All the knowledge of the Continent is at his fingertips, just waiting for him to reach out and take it. He throws himself into his classes, poetry and history and anthropology, learns everything he can to make the world his own. But music holds a special place in his heart. From the moment he gets his hand on a lute, he knows that this is what he wants to do for the rest of his life. Singing, playing, filling the world with song. This is what he was born to do.

~~He had always loved being a bird the most. For the flight, yes, but even more so for the music.~~

His professors love him, giving him more work and more chances, watching him soar. _You have a gift,_ they tell him. _And you have the work ethic to make it go far._ And he’s happy. He’s so, so happy. For his first year at Oxenfurt, he can almost forget that he’s a broken person.

And then his father dies of a fever.

Julian clutches his mother’s letter with shaking hands and wonders how he can hurt this much if he doesn’t have a soul. He closes his fingers over the locket and yearns for the easy comfort that everyone else can take in their daemon. Yearns for someone that can help him explain each and every emotion thrumming through his chest.

Tears burn sharp in his eyes as he sits alone on his bed, staring out the window, and asks the gods to give him someone to share this grief.

His prayer goes unanswered.

***

There’s more pain and more love in his heart than he knows what to do with, so he kisses and dances and fucks his way through Oxenfurt. And it’s good, it’s nice to be wanted, to be cherished and to cherish others. He composes songs of love and songs of heartbreak and his lovers giggle and scream at him in turn. And he finds people to listen when he talks of his griefs and his triumphs. It’s not the same as having someone that knows you as well as you know yourself but it is _something._

And sometimes, human touch burns like a brand against his skin. And it’s wrong, it’s wrong, get off of me, get—He’s able to bury the wrongness sometimes, able to grit his teeth until it leaves him, until he’s normal again. But he leaves too many lovers alone and confused in an empty bed while he hyperventilates in the hallway.

When a casual clap on the shoulder triggers the same tidal wave of _wrong wrong wrong,_ he begins to think there might be something seriously wrong with him.

***

It’s nearing the end of his second year when he falls in love— _proper_ love _—_ for the first time, with a charming artist by the name of Leanna. She’s bright and sunny, and she looks at Julian like he hung the moon in the sky, and Julian feels _safe_ for the first time in his life. Like if he falls, this woman will catch him. Like he might have finally found someone who understands him, who could love even the monstrous parts of him. They go from friends to fuckbuddies to lovers as easy as breathing, and, tangled up in her sheets, Julian thinks that this is it. This is _everything._

“I love you,” she says, smoothing back his hair and he basks in it, drinks it in like the world’s finest wine. His body is calm for the night, and her touch doesn’t hurt, doesn’t feel wrong. He wants to enjoy it while he can.

“I love you too,” he says, snuggling into her touch. His shifting presses the locket into his chest. And if this is everything then maybe—

 _Don’t_ ever _take it off._

He sits up in bed and slips the chain over his head. Cradles the skin-warmed metal like a baby bird.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks her. She rolls over, looking up at him with a worry-creased brow. He bends down and kisses her forehead, smoothing away the concern. She giggles and chases his lips upwards until she is sitting too, hovering just an inch away from him.

“You can tell me anything, Jul,” she murmurs. He swallows. Because this is the first time he has given away this part of his past and what if—but no. She loves him. She just said so.

He presses the locket into her hands.

“Your daemon?” she asks, flicking her eyes over her own Marco—a small but vicious viper currently twirling his way up the bedpost. _The snake and the ladybird,_ she had laughed, when Julian had first given her his well-rehearsed lie. _What an odd pair we make._

“Do you want me to touch her?” She thumbs her finger over the clasp, worrying her lip between her teeth. Flicks up her eyes to catch Julian’s, blushing bright red. Because letting someone touch your daemon is like handing them your heart.

“Just open it,” Julian says, before the slowly-gathering fear can get the better of him.

She laughs again, bright and carefree, and flicks open the locket. The laugh cuts off in her throat. Marco slithers over her shoulder to peer down at her hands.

“What—?” she says, and when she looks at Julian, all the love has left her eyes. There’s nothing left but fear. “What _are you?”_

“I can explain.” And oh, this was a bad idea, this was a very bad idea. He’s regretting it already but he can’t turn back the clock, can’t undo the knowledge that he’s just handed her. He can only work on controlling the damage.

She scrambles back, away from him, and his heart screams in his chest. It’s not the worst pain he’s ever felt, not by a long shot, but it hurts. It aches. _I thought we could have this._ _I thought you could still love me, even though I'm broken._

“What the _fuck_ are you?” she screams.

“I’m—”

“Get _away_ from me!”

He leans back, swallowing around the sharp pain in his throat, blinking back the tears springing into his eyes.

“I’m separated,” he says, his voice small and shaky. “I didn’t want—”

“Oh gods, I let you _fuck_ me,” she says, shoulders heaving. “Oh gods, oh gods—”

“I’m sorry. I never wanted—”

“Get out.”

“Leanna—”

“I said _get out!”_

And with that, something snaps in the air between them. There’s a blur of green and brown and a sharp burst of pain right below Julian’s collarbone and—

“Marco!”

And—

“He was scaring us!”

And—

The world was getting blurry and she wants him to leave, doesn’t she? He forces himself to his feet and it’s like the forest again, like he’s a child again, like every bit of strength and sense has drained away from him.

“Oh gods, oh gods, _someone_ _help!”_

And—

Is he relapsing? Is that what this is?

The floor rushes up to meet him along with a tidal wave of black and the pain flickers out like a candle.

***

~~“We need to be more careful,” Geralt says, running a hand over his head. “Can’t get so attached. Can’t be so emotional.”~~

~~“Why?” He leans into Geralt's touch, a purr rising in his belly.~~

~~“I’m going to be a witcher. People hate witchers.”~~

~~“ _You’re_ going to be a witcher?”~~

~~Geralt swallows, and his fingers still over Dandelion’s fur.~~

~~“I found out today. What the last trial is.”~~

***

He wakes up in the infirmary, Marco’s venom still lingering in his veins, leaving his vision all shimmery and distorted. The locket is on the bedside table, open and empty for all the world to see. And the headmaster is there, studying his student with pursed lips.

“I think it’s best if you leave Oxenfurt, Julian,” he says without preamble. All the air goes out of the room.

“But Leanna attacked _me.”_

It isn’t right. It isn’t _fair._ He’s worked so, so hard and he’s done nothing wrong. But the headmaster just shakes his head. There’s a bit of sadness in his eyes, a bit of sympathy, but it can’t outweigh what he’s letting happen.

“We can’t have someone in your—situation attending our institution. Word would get out. Parents would be furious. Teachers might refuse to work here.”

“I didn’t _do_ anything. Please, sir, music is my life.”

“Then you will find it wherever you go.”

There’s an air of finality to his words and he gets to his feet.

“Best of luck to you, Julian. Truly.”

That’s it. Not even an apology. Not even the slightest indication that what he’s doing is wrong. Julian picks the locket off the bedside table and hurls it at the wall with a wordless scream. Because he didn’t _ask_ for this. He never asked to be separated, he never asked to be soulless, so why is he being punished for something that already hurts so much?

He bunches himself into a ball and fists his fingers in his hair and lets himself cry for a long hour. Then he sniffles and draws a hand across his eyes. He needs to leave.

***

~~“They can’t make me leave you, they _can’t—”_~~

~~“I’m sorry, Dandelion, I’m so fucking sorry.”~~

***

He can’t keep calling himself Julian Pankratz, not when all of Oxenfurt knows of a soulless man by that same name. So he starts calling himself Jaskier, after his mother’s nickname for him. He travels the Continent, singing in whatever backwater tavern will have him, earning moldy bread and coin in equal measure, sending his mother letters full of reassuring lies, and shivering through the winters.

And he could have been a court bard, respected and admired, if he hadn’t been so _stupid._ He wouldn’t be mending a threadbare cloak for the twentieth time if he had just heeded his father’s warning. He closes his eyes and tries to hold back his tears with a shuddering sigh.

 _You’ve cried enough for a lifetime,_ he tells himself. _You don’t need to cry over a stupid piece of fabric._

He pulls the needle through the rough cotton, stitching it together. Someday he will wear silk in the summer and wool in the winter. Someday he’ll look in the mirror and his ribs will be hidden safely away behind a layer of muscle and fat. Someday he will be safe, and warm, and not fucking starving.

Someday.

***

He’s been twenty for twenty years when he realizes that his persistently dark hair isn’t the result of amazing genetics.

“Separation slows aging,” his mother tells him when he comes home in a panic, eyes wild and hands fluttering. She’s sixty and he’s forty and one day she’ll die and he—won’t. Ever. Apparently.

“For witchers,” he says, unable to believe what she’s telling him. “And mages.”

“And humans. So it seems.”

She cups his cheek in her hand and smiles at him, tired and proud.

"I had hoped that this wouldn't happen to you," she says. "But you can bear it."

“I can’t,” he says. It’s a crushing wave, the idea of living forever. Eternity is too vast and powerful to comprehend. Everyone he’s ever known—everyone he _will_ ever know—will die and he’ll be left here, alone and soulless and exhausted.

“You can,” she says. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known, Buttercup.”

***

He’s still living life one tavern at a time, but slowly, the threadbare cloaks are replaced by colorful doublets, the moldy bread replaced by free meals of warm stew and good ale. The hollows of his face fill in and there’s a victory in that. When he looks in the mirror he is happy with his reflection. Most of the time.

Some days, he just wants to peel back his skin and fly out of his body. His hair itches and his clothes burn and he’s so very slow. Movement is difficult when air feels wrong in his lungs. He doesn’t want to eat, and he doesn’t want to walk, and he doesn’t want to be the way that he is.

He doesn’t want to die either.

It’s not that.

It’s nothing that he can explain, but—he thinks that when he was separated, they cut out more than just his daemon. They took whatever made a man satisfied with his lot in life, and all he wants to do is grow beyond the boundaries of his bones.

The feeling always passes, eventually. He comes back to himself, and he can breathe again without oxygen burning like a sword in his chest. He’s Jaskier again, plain and pretty and content. And if he looks up at the sky more than a normal man should, and if he can’t stand on clifftops without wanting to hurl himself over the edge then well—all men have silly fantasies, do they not?

He lives. His purse slowly fills until he no longer fears one bad night will leave him sleeping on the street. He visits all the corners of the Continent, drinking in every beautiful mountain, forest, ocean. He starts to gain a bit of recognition as a talented bard with a truly filthy song selection, and patrons groan and cheer in equal measure when he starts up his set.

It’s good.

He’s good.

~~But he wants to fly again.~~

***

His mother is sixty, seventy, seventy-five and he is twenty, twenty, twenty. Her mind starts to fade away, and he doesn’t think she recognizes him when he visits, half the time. And then one day he comes home to find her bundled under a mess of blankets, breath rattling like a rusty tambourine, and the healers tell him to say his goodbyes. He sits with her for three long hours before her eyes flick open, feverish and hazy. They dart over him, glancing at his shoulders and the floor at his feet.

“Where’s your daemon?” she asks him, mistrust gathering in her eyes.

“Here,” he says, showing her the locket. There’s a lump in his throat the size of a rock.

“Oh,” she says. “That’s alright, then.”

She frowns.

“Why are you crying?”

“Am I?”

She drags a thumb over his cheek.

“It’ll be alright. Whatever it is, it’ll be alright,” she tells him. And it _never_ will but he can’t tell her that, can’t ask for her advice or cry into her shoulder. He can only accept what little comfort she has left for the stranger that her son has become.

“Thank you,” he says, reaching up to rest a smooth hand over her wrinkled one and it burns _wrong wrong wrong_ and he wants to sob, wants to scream. Why can’t his body let him _have_ this?

He chokes back his disgust and smiles at her.

“Buttercup,” she mumbles. “Dandelion.”

That word reaches inside him and _yanks_ and he sobs, sharp and sudden, barreled over by loss and pain and ~~he’s not supposed to be like this gods let him out, let him out, let him out, _please._~~

“It’s okay.” His mother pats his head idly, trailing fingers through his hair. “It’s okay, Buttercup.”

That’s the last thing she ever says.

Hit sits pressed against the window that night, staring at the wide starry sky. Grief settles over his heart _again_ , and it’s only the second layer. He’ll be forced to carry the deaths of everyone he’s ever loved for a long, long time.

He hugs his knees to his chest and, for an ageless immortal, he feels an awful lot like a scared child again.

***

He changes his name every ten years or so, in the hopes that people won’t look too hard at his agelessness. James, Jacoby, Juniper, he sheds identities one by one like a snake shedding its skin. None of them feel quite as comfortable as Jaskier, but it’s a necessary sacrifice. He keeps the same initial though. Giving himself some semblance of continuity, some reminder that he is, in fact, the same person. That he’s not a loose collection of memories stuffed into someone else’s skin.

~~Though that’s exactly what he is.~~

He’s singing at a tavern in Posada—or more accurately, getting pelted by bread in a tavern in Posada, might have to scratch that last song off his setlist—when he first sees Geralt.

His heart slams to a halt.

~~I’ve found him, I’ve found him, oh gods I’ve finally found _myself._~~

And he knows, from that first meeting, somewhere deep in his bones, that he’ll follow this man to the end of the world.

He nearly introduces himself as Dandelion, and that’s—confusing. It’s not a name in his repertoire, it doesn’t even start with the right letter. Where had that come from? His mother gasps the word in his ear and he shakes the memory away. Jaskier. He’ll go by Jaskier again. It’s been long enough.

***

There’s something _right_ about traveling with Geralt, something that he can’t quite put his finger on. He thinks, at first, that it might be attraction. But when he lets his brain wander in that direction, when he imagines Geralt pinning him to the bed, it triggers such a wave of revulsion that he nearly loses his dinner ~~because that would be so, so wrong and gods had they ruined his brain so much that he thought that fucking his other half was even remotely acceptable?~~ So it’s not that, then. He won’t be bedding the witcher any time soon.

He frowns, propping himself up on the pillow to study Geralt’s sleeping face. Maybe it’s a sense of understanding. Someone else who knows what it is to be cleaved in half. Witchers had their daemons stolen too. Perhaps Jaskier could find some commiseration there, some sense of shared loss. His hand flutters over the locket, considering.

But. Leanna. Oxenfurt. His whole future being dashed to pieces.

And perhaps Geralt would see him as something monstrous too. Jaskier isn’t a witcher, after all, or a mage, or anything _expected_ to be missing a daemon. He’s something new. Something unknown.

He lies back down and stares up at the ceiling.

~~They should be outside, looking up at the stars.~~

~~They shouldn’t be like this, so close but with an unmendable gulf yawning between them.~~

***

It never feels wrong, touching Geralt. His skin never sparks in warning, never sends shivers running up and down his spine. They trade touches easily, shoulder claps and hugs and impromptu wrestling matches and he wants to sob with how much he’s missed this.

***

Although the feeling of _skin too tight, bones all wrong, let me out of my body, dear gods_ gets worse and worse as the years go on. He doesn’t trust himself near any cliffs, or anything sharp or poisonous or otherwise deadly. He’s the happiest he’s ever been, he doesn’t _want_ to die and yet—

~~Let me out.~~

***

Geralt learns of his soullessness in the worst way possible and he’s—gentle about it. So, so _gentle,_ and so sad, and there’s a simmering sort of anger around his eyes. Not at Jaskier but for him. And Jaskier feels safe for the first time in _years._ They’re watching the stars together and Geralt is opening up about his own daemon, if only a little. And Jaskier can’t even _imagine_ remembering his stolen soul. It hurts enough to carry the space where she stood.

He doesn’t ever want to leave Geralt’s side, he realizes, reaching out to wrap a hand around his elbow. The surety of it is terrifying. Because everything in his life is ephemeral. Everything goes up in smoke sooner or later. And he can’t fool himself into thinking this thing with Geralt is permanent. Because someday he’ll be too slow, and a monster will get its teeth ‘round his throat ~~and what would happen to him, if Geralt died while they were separated?~~ Or he'll decide that Jaskier isn't worth all the trouble, and cast him aside like so many had.

So he leaves, the next day. Flits in and out of Geralt’s life like a hummingbird, weaving their stories together but refusing to tie himself down. It isn’t enough, but it is safe. It will shield his heart from the worst of the pain when this inevitably falls apart.

~~It makes their ragged connection scream every time they part ways.~~

***

And then.

The djinn.

Most of it passes in a haze of blood and pain and _oh gods I’m going to lose my voice._ He vaguely remembers an elf, a witch, a whole lot of naked people. Geralt hovering over him, worried despite himself. He remembers a murmured promise passing between Geralt and the witch, some kind of bargain for his life.

And then he wakes up.

The world is swirling around him and the _terrifying_ witch shouts at him to make his third wish _now._ He doesn’t even need to think about it. He’s saved the most important thing for last.

“I wish for Geralt and I to be reunited with our daemons,” he says. The djinn roars. He runs.

Nothing. No burst of light, no hole in his chest suddenly filled, no lark appearing out of the ether. His heart sinks. Was his wish too much, even for magic this powerful?

He sprints outside and Geralt is there. Just Geralt. No white wolf pacing at his side. And Jaskier wants to fall to the ground and cry because he had really hoped. He had really, _really_ thought that they could be whole again.

Geralt shoves past him and runs into the house, ignoring his protests, and Jaskier’s heart beats double time in his ears. Geralt is going to die. Right here, right now. His best friend is going to die and he can’t stop it.

A minute passes.

Two.

Chiridean clears his throat.

“Maybe they—"

And then there’s something very dark and very fast flying directly at his throat. He screams, just once, pouring all of his panic into his voice. And then the djinn slashes, sharper than any knife, severing his vocal cords and opening him up to the air.

He hits the ground, his muscles thrashing out of his control, following some sort of desperate, animal instinct. His hands flap weakly against his throat, fluttering against the wound that he knows will take his life. There’s no healing this.

There’s the sound of skidding gravel and then Geralt is kneeling over him, blocking out the sun. His eyes are wide and frantic as he presses a hand over the gaping cut and Jaskier would scream if he could. It hurts, it hurts, gods, just let him die in peace.

Geralt gets one arm underneath him and cradles him against his chest. The hand against his throat goes slack, letting the blood flow out faster. He knows it’s hopeless too. He’s letting him go. _Thank you,_ Jaskier thinks as hard as he can.

“It’s okay. It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Geralt babbles, and he’s _crying,_ oh gods, no. Jaskier’s spent so long thinking that he’d have to mourn Geralt. He’d never considered it might be the other way around.

The world darkens and darkens and a never-ending void tugs at Jaskier’s legs. _Let go,_ it hisses. _You’ve always wanted to, haven’t you? Just let yourself fall._

The last thing he sees is Geralt’s eyes.

***

He’s dead for a single heartbeat.

***

And then he remembers.

***

He remembers being a dragonfly, flitting alongside a curly-haired boy as he pretends to slay monsters and rescue princesses. He remembers curling up in the grass under a tapestry of stars and passing stories back and forth like secrets. He remembers giggling in the back of a cart as the boy pestered his mother for knowledge about the edge of the world.

_Oh, gods._

He hadn’t lost his daemon.

He _is_ a daemon.

He remembers following the boy down to the river to fetch a bucket of water, determined to please. He remembers coming back to the road to find it empty. Remembers turning into a foal as they sprint down the road, screaming for help, only to be snatched up by a golden-eyed warrior.

He remembers—

Kaer Morhen.

The _trials._

Geralt, golden eyes and white hair, different and wrong and burning with fever, sobbing against his fur and—

Geralt.

Geralt.

_He’s Geralt’s daemon._

And with that bit of memory, his life clicks into place. And he understands, now. He understands the full magnitude of what was ripped away from him.

He remembers Geralt being shoved into a small cell, remembers a door crashing down between them. Remembers being grabbed— _wrong, wrong, wrong—_ and carried away. Remembers thrashing and screaming and shifting—wolf, bear, snake, hawk, _let us go, let us—_

Remembers the bond snapping. Remembers falling still with the shock of it.

Remembers them carrying him into a small laboratory.

There was a body on the table.

A boy.

No older than five.

_Jaskier._

Remembers being forced into a cage, remembers a lever being pulled, remembers dissolving and dissolving and—

Waking up on the table. Sitting up. Staring down at his body—his body? Oh gods, what had they done to him, what had they—Scrabbling away on unfamiliar limbs, screaming with an unfamiliar voice, trying to make words work.

 _“Geralt!”_ he shrieked as they pinned him effortlessly back to the table. _“Geralt, help me!”_

“Don’t worry,” one of the witchers said, pinching his nose shut to force him to open his mouth. “You won’t even remember what you lost.”

A potion flowed down his throat like fire and—

His life burned away and—

He woke up in the forest.

***

He opens his eyes.

And for the first time in eighty years, he feels settled in his body. He stirs, stares down at the bloody shirt that covers the man that used to be him—and that’s weird, that’s a lot to parse, and if he thinks about it for too long, he’ll definitely start screaming.

“Jaskier?”

_Geralt._

He turns his head to face his person, his other half, _himself._ Tears glisten on his face and he’s holding out his hand like he doesn’t quite dare to touch him. A hole closes in Jaskier’s—no, _Dandelion’s—_ chest, two frayed threads knitting together and connecting.

“I remember,” he says, and his _voice._ It’s his real voice, not constrained by the throat of the corpse they had forced him into, and gods he didn’t even know he missed it.

“Dandelion,” Geralt whispers.

He flies into Geralt’s chest. Geralt catches him and cradles him, and he’s home, he’s home, he’s _whole again._

***

“Ready?” Geralt asks.

The cliff drops off into oblivion before him and he ruffles his feathers eagerly. Anticipation sparks between them.

“Ready,” he confirms.

Geralt hefts him into the sky and he snaps open his wings. And this.

_This._

The world hangs below him, small and infinite all at once, and he drops down into the chasm. Not far. He only makes it fifteen feet before he feels the bond tug in warning. He flaps his wings and soars back upwards. To some, it might feel like a leash.

But to a daemon and their human, it’s a connection. A reminder. I’m here for you. You’re here for me. We’ll never be apart again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I guess Jaskier freaking out because he forgot he wasn't human and having an identity crisis is like...my niche in this fandom? Whoops.
> 
> Me: Ooh it would be really cool if Geralt and Dandelion went on a quest to get the rest of the witchers their daemons back! Or I could explore Geralt and Yenn's relationship in this verse, or have the boys struggling with the fact that they're aging normally now, or—
> 
> Also me, banging my head against a table: Some things...can be...one-shots...for the love of god


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